Author: Alexander Kent

1802 Richard Bolitho is summoned to the Admiralty in London and given his orders for a difficult and, to him distasteful, task. Even an advanced promotion to Vice-Admiral to make him one of the youngest ever appointed does not compensate for his sudden and thankless mission. Bolitho and his wife are expecting their first child, and for once he is loath to quit the land for the demands of duty. The Peace of Amiens,...

September 1803 Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho finds himself the new master of Argonaute, a French flagship taken in battle. With the Peace of Amiens in ruins, he must leave behind the safety of Falmouth. What lies ahead is the grim reality of war at close quarters — where Bolitho will be called upon to anticipate the overall intention of the French fleet. But the battle has come to a personal vendetta between himself and...

September 1804 England stands alone against France and the fleets of Spain, anticipating invasion. Vice-Admiral Richard Bolitho has his own troubles to settle at home too. But his time on land is broken by an urgent summons from the King. Once more Bolitho hoists his flag above the veteran seventy-four-gun ship Hyperion and sets sail, this time with a new squadron headed for the Caribbean. Ordered to plan and effect a daring raid on...

February 1806 The frigate carrying Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho drops anchor off the shores of southern Africa. It is only four months since the resounding victory over the combined Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar, and the death of England’s greatest naval hero. Bolitho’s instructions are to assist in hastening the campaign in Africa, where an expeditionary force is attempting to recapture Cape Town from the Dutch. Outside Europe few have yet heard of the battle...

1818: The war with France has ended. Captain Adam Bolitho is given command of the newly commissioned frigate Onward and sent to North Africa on a diplomatic mission to accompany the French frigate Nautilus in a show of solidarity. He knows he is lucky—the voyage should be easy, but Adam longs for a chance to marry the beautiful Lowenna and settle down on the Bolitho estate in Cornwall. Instead he must deal with the...

1809 Returning to England after the dramatic capture of Martinique, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho finds all too brief respite from war and politics in the arms of his mistress, Lady Catherine Somervell. But the shadow of a new conflict already darkens the horizon. France has forged an uneasy alliance with America. Together, they threaten Britain’s trade routes. Bolitho is ordered immediately into the Indian Ocean, but, even though he is his country’s newest Admiral,...

March 1808 Napoleon holds Portugal and threatens his old ally Spain, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho is dispatched once more to the Cape of Good Hope to establish a permanent naval force there. Setting aside his bitter memories and the anguish of a friendship betrayed, Bolitho takes passage in the ill-fated Golden Plover. With him sail others commanded by duty and lured by danger – and those who wish only to escape. But when shipwreck...

December 1815 Adam Bolitho’s orders are unequivocal. As captain of His Majesty’s frigate Unrivalled of forty-six guns, he is required to ‘repair in the first instance to Freetown, Sierra Leone, and reasonably assist the senior officer of the patrolling squadron.’ But all efforts of the British anti-slavery patrols to curb a flourishing trade in human life are hampered by unsuitable ships, by the indifference of a government more concerned with old enemies made distrustful...

February 1813 With convoys from Canada and the Caribbean falling victim to American privateers, Sir Richard Bolitho returns to Halifax to pursue a war he knows will not be won, but which neither Britain nor the United States can afford to lose. England’s youngest admiral desires only peace. But peace will not be found in the icy Canadian waters, where a young, angry nation asserts its identity and men who share a common heritage...

Antigua 1817 Every harbour and estuary is filled with ghostly ships, the famous and the legendary now redundant in the aftermath of the war. In this uneasy peace, Adam Bolitho is fortunate to be offered the seventy-four gun Athena, and as flag captain to Vice-Admiral Sir Graham Bethune once more follows his destiny to the Caribbean. But in these haunted waters where Richard Bolitho and his ‘band of brothers’ once fought a familiar enemy,...